Immortal Blood
by Captain Possum
Summary: He lays dying despite technically being dead. Yearning for intelligent conversation, Movarth Piquine speaks with one of his own in his final minutes. One-shot.


It took her a few minutes to notice unsteady breaths in the darkened corner.

She thought she'd killed them all, but maybe she was losing her touch. She'd been distracted for the past few days with the knowledge that the fate of the land rested on her shoulders.

When she prepared a fireball to finish off the job and put the poor sod out of his misery, the pained gasps grew louder and faster. Normally at this point she would offer no mercy and end his life but there was something about the eyes she had just caught sight of that made her stop. Maybe it reminded her of herself, and that's why she sheathed her spell and tentatively stepped forward.

"You…" he uttered, wincing when he tried to continue "You killed all of them." She recognised that voice. Movarth Piquine. He was tougher than she gave him credit for.  
"I killed them because of your foolish plan" She answered nonchalantly, their eye contact never breaking.

He continued to grimace in pain, but she still didn't kill him. He wasn't done yet and she could tell.  
"But why?" He coughed out blood and it trickled down his chin, but he made no effort to wipe it away. Slumped against a wall he was much too weak to do anything at all. "Why do you try to protect them?"

For a moment she didn't respond and placed down the weapon she was holding onto a worn table. Her eyes narrowed, "I don't understand the question. In fact, I'm not quite sure why I'm talking with you in the first place, vampire."  
He scoffed at her response "Don't try to hide it, girl. You and I share the same blood. How long? Ten years? A hundred?"  
She sniffed indignantly at his accusation "A hundred next week."

Trying to prop himself up, he started again. "I used to be like you. I used to care. Thought I could be different, make people see us differently." He glared "I was wrong."  
"Then you weren't trying hard enough" She replied assertively, finding the conversation two enemies were having borderline comical, despite its sinister nature. But for reasons unclear to her she didn't grant him death. She'd read _Immortal Blood_, and was almost curious about the man who became the very thing he hunted. Her own sick hunger for knowledge prevented her doing the right thing and destroying him straight away.

"You protect them even though…" He hissed at the burning sensation in his thigh "…Even though they hate you. Even after years of walking Tamriel as an immortal you're naïve." His face contorted into a sarcastic grin "I salute you, child of the night. I salute you."  
"And why shouldn't they hate me? Hate us? I read your book, Movarth. You hated them too before you became one. What changed?"  
He laughed bitterly, but avoided the question "They killed one of my best students, and so I set out to hunt them. All of them." Coughing once more and eyes glazed over with a distant memory, he lifted his hand to his stomach and gingerly held it over the open slash wound, blood oozing out and for a second the woman opposite him was reminded she hadn't fed for a day or so. "It was a fool's errand. I was outwitted and became… I became this."

This time she sat down and decided to disregard the fact they were meant to be foes and he was the mastermind behind potentially enslaving an entire town of people. They would meet as equals, if only for a moment. "I stopped you not because I specifically hunt vampires, or because it was heroic to do so, but because you would have brought attention to our kind. An entire town never ages, never speaks for itself, is clearly cattle for a group of monsters. Other holds panic. They begin to search out vampires specifically. And when they find them…" She lifted her hand to show an orb of fire, "You and I both know what happens to a caught vampire."

"You speak from experience, don't you?"  
There was an eerie silence, where even the dust lingered longer than it should have. "Cyrodiil." She murmured "They descended upon a small dwelling and enslaved them all. I was there." When he carried on staring at her with his pained red eyes, she finished "I was the one that enslaved them."  
"And yet here you are" Movarth's breathing was still unsteady, and his words were shaken but the message was clear "Preventing the same thing from happening to a small town nobody cares about. I'll ask again. Why do you protect them?"  
"Because I want to. Because I saw their faces every day as I fed from that small town in Cyrodiil, and I felt so guilty I slaughtered every single one because they deserved better. I remember their cold dead bodies and I see Morthal, I see every person in Skyrim that deserves better. I refuse to let another soul suffer like that as long as I live."

He listened, but his time was coming to an end. His body was turning to ash. He ignored it. "And they hunted you."  
"Yes, they hunted a lot of us. They burnt my house to the ground while I was still in it." Surprised at herself for confessing so much, she wondered why he had started talking to her in the first place. "I escaped, and I fled the border to Skyrim. Now here I am." She paused "I'm not upset, though. It's not the first time I've had to run away because of what I am."

"I discarded my longing for a mortal life after the first few decades. Did you choose your blood willingly?" He let out a long sigh, reliving the moment of his own turning. His was not a willing transformation, and yet today as he lay dying he embraced it. Strange how a few decades of immortal life could change a person. He looked at the woman again to see her staring forlornly at her hands.  
"Yes and no. I was ill, dying, and was offered a cure. The cure was not what I anticipated it to be. I'll leave it at that." She glanced up again, her lips a hard set line from trying to push back long forgotten memories. He wasn't sure if she was remembering her illness or her unwitting transformation. Her past naivety would have been humorous to him had he been smarter himself in his mortal life.  
"And you already know of my rebirth. I suspect if the people of Skyrim were smarter and could read for themselves, they would all know too." He smirked a little at his own statement, deciding dignity would be the best way in which to go out.

They sat strangely comfortable silence while Movarth slowly fell apart. "Deep conversation is something I've missed for all these years. What's your name, girl?"  
She stared at him for the final time. "It's Virani"  
"Will you continue to watch over the mortals, Virani? No matter how much they hate you?" His tone was deadpan despite clearly being in pain, but to her it seemed like a request from a dying man.  
"I will. I'm going to repent for the things I've done, one dead man at a time"  
"Hmm" He closed his eyes as the numb embrace of death spread through his lower body "I wish you luck, girl. Because I'm… ugh… I'm not the only one out there looking to cause suffering. They'll be people worse than me" When he had to stop to once again try and ease his pain, Virani kneeled in front of him and bowed her head in a strange act of respect "I'll tell you this. You… can't afford to be surprised. You must land the first blow…" He watched his hands disintegrate in front of him, and smiled at her;

"And the last."


End file.
